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Variation of Growth in Successive Experiments with Folic Acid-Deficient Chicks and the Influence of Aureomycin¹

National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Bethesda, Maryland

A study involving 12 successive 4-week experiments was made with female New Hampshire chicks fed a folic acid-deficient diet under as nearly identical conditions as possible. Mild folic acid deficiency signs were produced in the first half of the study, followed by a marked increase in the severity of deficiency signs in the latter half of the study in spite of no change in the diet. Dietary aureomycin markedly depressed the growth of the deficient chicks during the early experiments but had very little effect in later experiments when typical folic acid deficiency signs were produced by feeding the basal diet alone. In no instance did aureomycin increase the growth of the folic acid-deficient chicks. The differences in results were interpreted as possibly being due to changes in environmental or intestinal microflora, or both, over the course of the experiments, although other possibilities exist.

Manuscript received 9 July 1953.